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Despite the images of teenage angst conjured by the show’s soundtrack, several of the hundreds
of people turned away from the Broadway production of Green Day’s
American Idiot at the Palace Theatre last night were, well, cool about it.

The show, based on the band’s best-selling album of the same name, was canceled late yesterday
afternoon after much of the cast and crew succumbed to an undisclosed illness. Today's 1 p.m. show
was also canceled.

Officials with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts took to Twitter and Facebook,
and put a notice on CAPA’s website, a little after 6 p.m. to alert theatergoers to last night's
cancellation. That was too late for several hundred ticketholders who came Downtown early to find
food and parking before the8 p.m. performance.

Alyssa Stamper, 19, of the Far West Side, helpfully called out to those breathlessly sprinting
to the theater that the show had been canceled, even as she and her mother, Jolie Stamper, tried to
decide what to do with their suddenly free evening.

The tickets had been a Christmas present for Alyssa, Mrs. Stamper said, and both were bummed to
miss out. But they didn’t want to brave the growing mob queued up outside the theater in the hopes
of trading their tickets for seats to today’s matinee or evening performances.

“I was super-excited,” the younger Stamper said, though she said she held nothing against the
suffering cast.

Neither did season-ticketholders Mary and Lee Hebert, who said they never had seen a show
canceled because of illness since they began attending CAPA’s Broadway series in the early
1980s.

The Upper Arlington couple said they wouldn’t be able to attend either of today’s final
scheduled performances of the Broadway hit as they would be watching the Ohio State-Iowa State men’s
basketball game.

CAPA spokeswoman Rolanda Copley said ticketholders could get refunds or trade their tickets from
yesterday’s performance for either the 6:30 p.m. performances today.

Those shows are scheduled to go on, Copley said, but if they don’t, refunds will be issued to
all ticketholders.

Copley said she hadn’t talked to any of the cast, but she was told it was a flu or flu-like
illness that laid them low. It must have moved quickly, she said, because yesterday’s matinee
performance had been held.

If today’s shows are canceled, it’s not known when the production might return to Columbus.

That’s the saddest aspect of yesterday’s cancellation for friends Casey Freeman and Christie
Riepenhoff, who went to the show last night to celebrate Riepenhoff’s 29th birthday. Still, the
pair said they would make do with a night of fun in Columbus.

Freeman said they chose the show because they enjoy the band’s music, and because her parents
had seen it and said it was scandalous.